Editor's File: Anonymity — sometimes — makes all the difference

Some years ago, the lone black police officer in a rural Illinois college town stopped by the office of the newspaper where I was the editor and shared a dirty secret about his brethren in blue.

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Posted Apr. 8, 2012 at 12:01 AM

Posted Apr. 8, 2012 at 12:01 AM

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Some years ago, the lone black police officer in a rural Illinois college town stopped by the office of the newspaper where I was the editor and shared a dirty secret about his brethren in blue.

Just before midnight, police officers had been sent to the west side of town to investigate a report of gunshots. The west side was where the town's lone housing project stood. Most of the people who lived there were black. When the police showed up, they immediately stopped two men on foot, both black, whom they wrestled into cruisers and arrested. One, the music director at the oldest black church in town, was pepper-sprayed in the eyes at close range. The other, a college basketball player and the head of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, ended up with a dislocated shoulder. Neither man had had anything to do with the gunshots.

The officer who came to tell us about what had happened would become one of the sources for a months-long investigation of police relations with the town's black citizens. It was a history of distrust, racial hostility and regular harassment. The officer was willing to give us information on one condition: that we not identify him. He feared not only for his job, but for his physical safety.

The newspaper's reporters and editors discussed his request. It didn't take long for us to agree to it. We judged the information he would provide as being essential and in the public interest. We also knew we would be unable to obtain it in any other way.

That is the standard that this newspaper and many others use to decide whether or not to allow sources of information to be anonymous.

And it is why anonymous sources appear so infrequently in The Standard-Times or on our website, SouthCoastToday.com.

We know that our readers want to be able to judge for themselves whether or not a source is believable and what his motives might be in providing us with information.

So the overwhelming majority of sources that appear in The Standard-Times are identified by name and other information that helps connect him to the information he provides.

There are times, however, when we decide to grant sources anonymity, and when that happens, approval is required in advance from me as the newspaper's editor.

Such has been the case in several instances over the past 11 days since the newspaper first learned that Mayor Jon Mitchell and School Superintendent Mary Louise Francis had first met to discuss whether or not she would continue in her position.

The leadership of the New Bedford Public Schools has been perhaps the single most important news story in the city for two years now, ever since the forced resignation of Portia Bonner, the first African-American superintendent in the city's history.

When an emergency School Committee meeting was called last Tuesday, the board, the mayor, lawyers and Superintendent Francis retreated behind closed doors to talk about a resolution.

Mitchell had made his dissatisfaction with the School Department administration clear during his campaign for mayor and during a series of forums held during his first months in office, but just what the agenda was for that closed-door meeting was unknown.

And given that the lawyers were instructing the people closest to the conversation not to talk about what was happening, the public was being cut out of the discussion about the future of the most public of institutions in the entire community.

That didn't seem right to us.

To report the story, we agreed to accept information from people close to it on the condition that we not identify them in any way. As a result, the newspaper was able to write that Mitchell had offered Francis a severance deal she must accept or he would attempt to have her fired.

Buying out her entire contract could cost $330,000 or so.

A firing for cause could mean a lawsuit that would cost a lot more.

In either case, the citizens of New Bedford, from schoolchildren to homeowners, have a stake in the outcome.

It was information we judged to be essential and in the public interest, and we quickly determined that we could not obtain it in any other way.

There are times — and they will continue to be rare — when the use of anonymous sources of information is critical to the reporting of important news that is in the public interest.

This was one of those times.

Bob Unger is the editor and associate publisher of The Standard-Times and SouthCoastToday.com He can be reached by email at runger@s-t.com or by phone at 508-979-4430.